Indian police block opposition protests over price increases

Fri, August 5, 2022


NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian police detained dozens of lawmakers from the opposition Congress party, including key leader Rahul Gandhi, as they attempted to march Friday to the president’s palace and prime minister’s residence to protest soaring food and fuel prices and an increase in the goods and services tax.

Police also detained hundreds of party supporters inside it headquarters in New Delhi and elsewhere to prevent them from joining the protesting lawmakers, many of whom wore black.

Several women protesters cooked food outside the party headquarters using wood for the fire, saying that cooking gas prices have risen beyond the means of poor and middle-class families.

In New Delhi, police began barricading the Congress party headquarters and homes of party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday after the party announced plans to organize countrywide protests against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“What we are witnessing is the death of democracy in India,” Rahul Gandhi told reporters. ”Anybody who stands against this idea of the onset of dictatorship is viciously attacked, put in jail, arrested, and beaten. The idea is that people’s issues — whether they are price rises, unemployment, or violence in society — people’s issues must not be raised. That is the sole agenda of the government.”

Police prevented the party's efforts to hold similar marches in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, Gauhati, and some other cities, detaining party members and taking them away in buses and other vehicles.

There was no immediate police comment. The lawmakers and their supporters were expected to be released after brief detentions — a general practice by police in such protests.

"This is the worst form of vendetta politics. We will not submit! We will not be silenced! We will continue to raise our voice against injustices and failures of the Modi government,” the party said in a tweet.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman defended the government’s handling of the economy in Parliament earlier this week and said there was zero probability of India slipping into recession.

The opposition was infuriated by the government's decision last month to impose a tax on packed milk curd, cheese, buttermilk, packed rice, flour and wheat. The government earlier raised fuel prices.

Rishi Lekhi And Shonal Ganguly, The Associated Press

Lufthansa ground staff agree pay deal after strike


Thu, August 4, 2022 


 Lufthansa ground staff in Germany go on strike over 9.5% pay claim, in Munich

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Ground staff of Germany's Lufthansa and management have reached a pay deal after a third round of negotiations, averting further walkouts during the busy summer travel season, labour union Verdi and the carrier said late on Thursday.

Airlines across Europe are facing labour strife this summer as the rapid recovery in tourism has led to staff shortages and soaring inflation has prompted employees to demand higher wages.

The pay dispute at Lufthansa resulted in a strike last week that caused the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights.

The carrier still faces uncertainty over possible walkouts by its workers. The carrier is due to hold talks next week with pilots, who have already voted in favour of strikes.

After two years during which the global COVID-19 pandemic held back wage increases in the aviation sector and inflation now hovering around 8%, the deal announced late on Wednesday will mean wage increases in real terms, Verdi said.

It includes a pay hike of 200 euros a month from July 1 this year, plus an increase by 2.5% or at least 125 euros a month from Jan. 1 next year and another 2.5% from July 1, 2023.

It will mean bigger increases for lower-income staff and smaller ones for workers in higher income brackets. For instance, for staff working at check-in counters at airports it will mean total increases of between 13.6% and 18.4%, depending on how long they have been with the company, Verdi said.

Lufthansa added that the deal would mean an increase in gross base salaries of 8.3% for workers earning 6,500 euros a month and of 19.2% for those making 2,000 euros.

Also, for lower-income workers, hourly pay will be set at 13 euros from Oct. 1, above the legal minimum of 12 euros. The union had originally demanded a 9.5% pay hike for ground staff.

"This result, which makes Lufthansa more attractive as an employer, will provide relief," Verdi negotiator Christine Behle said.

The wage agreement will run for 18 months, the parties said.

Earlier on Thursday, Lufthansa said it expected demand for short-haul flights in Europe to drive growth at its passenger airlines this year, forecasting a return to group operating profit for the full year.

(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Tom Sims and Maria Sheahan; Editing by Daniel Wallis and David Evans)

Amazon workers at UK warehouse stop work to protest pay

Thu, August 4, 2022 


LONDON (AP) — More than 700 Amazon warehouse workers in England staged a protest Thursday in a dispute over pay, in the latest sign of workplace friction stoked by Britain's cost of living crisis and a growing discontent among employees over wage and working conditions.

The GMB union said employees at the facility in Tilbury, Essex, east of London, stopped work after the ecommerce giant offered to raise salaries by 35 pence (42 cents) an hour.

The union said workers want a raise of 2 pounds to better match the demands of their job and cope with soaring inflation. Amazon doesn't recognize the union, which likely has one of the highest number of members at the Tilbury location out of its 28 U.K. facilities.

“Amazon is one of the most profitable companies on the planet," said Steve Garelick, the GMB union's regional organizer for logistics and gig economy. “With household costs spiraling, the least they can do is offer decent pay.”

Garelick shared videos on Twitter of workers sitting down at tables, which he said showed a “withdrawal of labour" at the Tilbury warehouse.

He said Amazon's “repeated use of short-term contracts is designed to undermine workers’ rights.”

Amazon said U.K. warehouse employee salaries will rise to between 10.50 and 11.45 pounds an hour, which it called “competitive pay." But its dependent on location.

As well, the company said employees get a comprehensive benefits package that includes private medical insurance, life insurance, subsidized meals, and employee discounts that are “worth thousands annually,” as well as a company pension plan.

Similar protests have been staged in the U.S., including in March, when more than 60 workers in New York and Maryland walked out on the job to call for a $3 raise and a return to 20-minute breaks the company put in place during the pandemic.

Amazon boosted its average hourly wage to $18 an hour last year.

The Amazon Labor Union, a nascent group composed of former and current Amazon workers, won its union election on Staten Island, New York partly on a platform of raising wages to $30 an hour. But getting anywhere close to that is bound to be a tough fight. Amazon has been seeking to scrap the union's April victory and is petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for a new election.

The Associated Press

Analysis-As inflation bites, Japan's PM finds unlikely ally in labour unions

Thu, August 4, 2022 

Worker cycles near a factory at the Keihin industrial zone in Kawasaki

By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Leika Kihara

TOKYO (Reuters) - As Japan faces its first major battle with inflation in decades, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is extending a rare olive branch to labour unions, who he sees as crucial to his wider push to boost household wealth.

Wage stagnation has blighted Japan's workers for years as the country was mired in a deflationary mindset that stopped firms raising salaries, and as weakened unions shied away from demanding more pay.

As part of his "new capitalism" platform to widen wealth distribution, Kishida has urged firms to boost pay and give households spending power to tolerate higher prices.

He is also approaching unions for help in achieving what other countries would frown upon: a spiral of rising inflation triggering strong wage growth.

In January, Kishida became the first premier in almost a decade to attend a new year party held by Rengo, the main umbrella union, in a rare gesture to organised labour by the head of the pro-business Liberal Democratic Party.

At the event, he called for labour union help in achieving "a bold turnaround in the downtrend in wage levels seen in recent years" and "wage hikes befitting an era of new capitalism."

In June, he made a similarly rare visit to Toyota Motor Corp's factory in what some politicians saw as a bid to court union votes.

The attempt to close some of the distance between unions and government illustrates the depth of Japan's economic woes and has, at least for now, put Kishida on the same side as organised labour in calling for higher wages.

SEIZING THE MOMENT

Japan's recent union history has been unspectacular.

Most unions are in-house bodies representing employees at their firms, rather than on an industry basis. As such, they tend to prioritise job security over pay.

Now, however, conditions for higher wages appear to be falling into place in ways never seen in deflation-prone Japan.

The job market is at its tightest in decades and inflation exceeded the central bank's 2% target for the first time in seven years, pressuring firms to raise wages.

Shedding its image as a counter-force to a pro-business government, labour unions, too, are warming to the administration as they seek ways to put their ideas into practice beyond relying on a weak, fragmented opposition.

Tomoko Yoshino, head of Rengo, attended a ruling party meeting in April as a token gesture of support toward its policy on work-style reform.

"It's true some of Kishida's proposals mesh with ours," such as steps to narrow income disparity, said Hiroya Nakai, an executive at Japanese Association of Metal, Machinery and Manufacturing Workers - a union for small manufacturers.

"At times it's necessary to make proposals to the ruling party," he said.

The relationship between Kishida and unions contrasts with that of many other countries, where governments see current demands for wage hikes as a risk that could trigger unwelcome inflation.

It also highlights Japan's unique situation where a tight job market does not necessarily lead to broad-based wage rises.

Japan's average wages have hardly risen since the early 1990s and were the lowest among G7 advanced nations last year, according to OECD data.

Japan's wage growth lags that of major peers: https://tmsnrt.rs/3ORu2md

Japan's average wages ranked lowest among peers in 2021: https://tmsnrt.rs/3Bkyt5x

There are signs of change as a rapidly ageing society intensifies labour shortages. Firms agreed with unions to raise average wages by 2.07% this fiscal year, up from 1.78% last year to mark the biggest hike since 2015, Rengo estimates show.

With inflation rising above 2%, unions are gearing up to demand even higher pay next year.

"We must bear in mind that inflation is accelerating and pushing real wages into negative territory," said Akira Nidaira, an executive at Rengo. "The key is whether Japan can finally eradicate the public's deflationary mindset."

DEFLATION IS OVER

Many analysts, however, doubt unions have the teeth to demand wage hikes big enough to offset rising inflation, and see the changing nature of work undermine such efforts.

"Japan's job market is diversifying, raising questions about the relevance of labour unions," said Kotaro Tsuru, a professor at Keio University. "If they cling to their traditional focus on protecting permanent workers' jobs, their fate is sealed."

As Japan's labour market tightens, job security has become less attractive for younger workers who change employers more often than their older counterparts.

Tracking global trends, union membership has been declining longer term. It hit 16.9% in 2021, hovering near an all-time low and well below 30.5% in 1982.

"I don't think labour unions are playing their role. Wages aren't rising as much as I hoped," said a 25-year-old employee at a major Japanese manufacturer and in-house union member.

"Unions might prove useful some day but on a daily basis, they don't seem to be pro-active," said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Also working against unions, almost 40% of employees are now non-regular workers and mostly unprotected by unions.

While some unions now allow non-regular workers to join, most still prioritise permanent workers.

"Labour unions haven't adapted themselves to the changing needs of the younger generation," said Hisashi Yamada, senior economist at Japan Research Institute.

"Accustomed to prolonged economic stagnation, they seem to have forgotten how to demand wage hikes," he said. "That needs to change as the era of deflation and dis-inflation is over."

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Leika Kihara; Additional reporting by Kantaro Komiya, Daniel Leussink and David Dolan; Editing by Sam Holmes)

Unifor reaches tentative agreements with casinos in Pickering and Ajax

TORONTO, Aug. 4, 2022 /CNW/ - The strike at two Great Canadian Gaming Corporation (GCGC) casinos in Ontario could soon be over after tentative agreements were signed today.

Unifor member on the picket line at Pickering Casino Resort. (CNW Group/Unifor)

"My sincere congratulations to the Local 1090 members who took on a powerful employer to fight for what was fair," said Lana Payne, Unifor National Secretary-Treasurer.

Unifor members at Pickering Casino Resort and Casino Ajax have been on strike since July 29, 2022. Details of the tentative agreement will be released following the membership ratification votes to be held on August 5.

"These were tough negotiations and we were able to get to a tentative agreement because members took a principled stand for better working conditions," said Corey Dalton, President of Local 1090. "Gaming sector workers deserve fairness during these uncertain economic times."

A coordinated bargaining table for Unifor members at GCGC properties met in July 2022 seeking improvements to wages, benefits, and pensions. Unifor negotiators were also trying to reduce the employer's reliance on precarious part-time jobs.

On July 23, 2022 Unifor negotiators signed agreements for GCGC sites Great Blue Heron Casino, Casino Woodbine, Shorelines Casino Thousand Islands, and Shorelines Casino Peterborough, Elements Casino Mohawk, and Elements Casino Brantford.

Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing 315,000 workers in every major area of the economy. The union advocates for all working people and their rights, fights for equality and social justice in Canada and abroad, and strives to create progressive change for a better future.

SOURCE Unifor

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2022/04/c6761.html

Meta mum on US election misinformation efforts as midterms loom

Fri, August 5, 2022 


WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook owner Meta is quietly curtailing some of the safeguards designed to thwart voting misinformation or foreign interference in U.S. elections as the November midterm vote approaches.

It's a sharp departure from the social media giant's multibillion-dollar efforts to enhance the accuracy of posts about U.S. elections and regain trust from lawmakers and the public after their outrage over learning the company had exploited people’s data and allowed falsehoods to overrun its site during the 2016 campaign.

The pivot is raising alarm about Meta’s priorities and about how some might exploit the world’s most popular social media platforms to spread misleading claims, launch fake accounts and rile up partisan extremists.

“They're not talking about it," said former Facebook policy director Katie Harbath, now the CEO of the tech and policy firm Anchor Change. “Best case scenario: They're still doing a lot behind the scenes. Worst case scenario: They pull back, and we don't know how that's going to manifest itself for the midterms on the platforms."

Since last year, Meta has shut down an examination into how falsehoods are amplified in political ads on Facebook by indefinitely banishing the researchers from the site.

CrowdTangle, the online tool that the company offered to hundreds of newsrooms and researchers so they could identify trending posts and misinformation across Facebook or Instagram, is now inoperable on some days.

Public communication about the company's response to election misinformation has gone decidedly quiet. Between 2018 and 2020, the company released more than 30 statements that laid out specifics about how it would stifle U.S. election misinformation, prevent foreign adversaries from running ads or posts around the vote and subdue divisive hate speech.

Top executives hosted question and answer sessions with reporters about new policies. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facebook posts promising to take down false voting information and authored opinion articles calling for more regulations to tackle foreign interference in U.S. elections via social media.

But this year Meta has only released a one-page document outlining plans for the fall elections, even as potential threats to the vote remain clear. Several Republican candidates are pushing false claims about the U.S. election across social media. In addition, Russia and China continue to wage aggressive social media propaganda campaigns aimed at further political divides among American audiences.

Meta says that elections remain a priority and that policies developed in recent years around election misinformation or foreign interference are now hard-wired into company operations.

“With every election, we incorporate what we’ve learned into new processes and have established channels to share information with the government and our industry partners,” Meta spokesman Tom Reynolds said.

He declined to say how many employees would be on the project to protect U.S. elections full time this year.

During the 2018 election cycle, the company offered tours and photos and produced head counts for its election response war room. But The New York Times reported the number of Meta employees working on this year's election had been cut from 300 to 60, a figure Meta disputes.

Reynolds said Meta will pull hundreds of employees who work across 40 of the company's other teams to monitor the upcoming vote alongside the election team, with its unspecified number of workers.

The company is continuing many initiatives it developed to limit election misinformation, such as a fact-checking program started in 2016 that enlists the help of news outlets to investigate the veracity of popular falsehoods spreading on Facebook or Instagram. The Associated Press is part of Meta's fact-checking program.

This month, Meta also rolled out a new feature for political ads that allows the public to search for details about how advertisers target people based on their interests across Facebook and Instagram.

Yet, Meta has stifled other efforts to identify election misinformation on its sites.

It has stopped making improvements to CrowdTangle, a website it offered to newsrooms around the world that provides insights about trending social media posts. Journalists, fact-checkers and researchers used the website to analyze Facebook content, including tracing popular misinformation and who is responsible for it.

That tool is now “dying,” former CrowdTangle CEO Brandon Silverman, who left Meta last year, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this spring.

Silverman told the AP that CrowdTangle had been working on upgrades that would make it easier to search the text of internet memes, which can often be used to spread half-truths and escape the oversight of fact-checkers, for example.

“There’s no real shortage of ways you can organize this data to make it useful for a lot of different parts of the fact-checking community, newsrooms and broader civil society,” Silverman said.

Not everyone at Meta agreed with that transparent approach, Silverman said. The company has not rolled out any new updates or features to CrowdTangle in more than a year, and it has experienced hourslong outages in recent months.

Meta also shut down efforts to investigate how misinformation travels through political ads.

The company indefinitely revoked access to Facebook for a pair of New York University researchers who they said collected unauthorized data from the platform. The move came hours after NYU professor Laura Edelson said she shared plans with the company to investigate the spread of disinformation on the platform around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which is now the subject of a House investigation.

“What we found, when we looked closely, is that their systems were probably dangerous for a lot of their users,” Edelson said.

Privately, former and current Meta employees say exposing those dangers around the American elections have created public and political backlash for the company.

Republicans routinely accuse Facebook of unfairly censoring conservatives, some of whom have been kicked off for breaking the company’s rules. Democrats, meanwhile, regularly complain the tech company hasn’t gone far enough to curb disinformation.

“It’s something that’s so politically fraught, they’re more trying to shy away from it than jump in head first.” said Harbath, the former Facebook policy director. “They just see it as a big old pile of headaches.”

Meanwhile, the possibility of regulation in the U.S. no longer looms over the company, with lawmakers failing to reach any consensus over what oversight the multibillion-dollar company should be subjected to.

Free from that threat, Meta's leaders have devoted the company's time, money and resources to a new project in recent months.

Zuckerberg dived into this massive rebranding and reorganization of Facebook last October, when he changed the company’s name to Meta Platforms Inc. He plans to spend years and billions of dollars evolving his social media platforms into a nascent virtual reality construct called the “metaverse” — sort of like the internet brought to life, rendered in 3D.

His public Facebook page posts now focus on product announcements, hailing artificial intelligence, and photos of him enjoying life. News about election preparedness is announced in company blog posts not written by him.

In one of Zuckerberg's posts last October, after an ex-Facebook employee leaked internal documents showing how the platform magnifies hate and misinformation, he defended the company. He also reminded his followers that he had pushed Congress to modernize regulations around elections for the digital age.

“I know it’s frustrating to see the good work we do get mischaracterized, especially for those of you who are making important contributions across safety, integrity, research and product,” he wrote on Oct. 5. "But I believe that over the long term if we keep trying to do what’s right and delivering experiences that improve people’s lives, it will be better for our community and our business.”

It was the last time he discussed the Menlo Park, California-based company’s election work in a public Facebook post.

___

Associated Press technology writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP's coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

Amanda Seitz, The Associated Press

Dutch government, farmers in talks on emission cut targets

Fri, August 5, 2022 


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Representatives of Dutch farmers were meeting Friday with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other Cabinet ministers to discuss the government's nitrogen emissions reduction goals that have sparked disruptive protests in recent weeks.

But the prospect of success appeared slim, with two main activist farmers' organizations demanding concessions and not attending because they have no trust in the veteran politician appointed to act as intermediary. They say the mediator, Johan Remkes, is not independent.

Rutte did not comment to reporters as he entered the meeting in the central city of Utrecht.

Farmers angry at the target of slashing nitrogen emissions 50% by 2030 have blockaded supermarket distribution centers, parked tractors on highways and dumped garbage including manure and asbestos on roads in recent weeks.

Rutte has criticized what he said are small groups of farmers who he says have endangered others with the nature of their protests. “Willfully endangering others, damaging our infrastructure and threatening people who help clean up is beyond all limits," he wrote on Twitter last week.

The government has been forced to act after courts in recent years began blocking permits for infrastructure and housing projects because the country was missing its emissions targets.

The government has earmarked an extra 24.3 billion euros ($25.6 billion) to finance agricultural reforms that will likely make many farmers drastically reduce their number of livestock or get rid of them altogether. Provincial authorities have been given a year to formulate plans to cut emissions.

Sjaak van der Tak, chairman of the main farmers' lobby group LTO, said the talks were vital. LTO represents some 30,000 farms in the Netherlands.

"It is of enormous importance that we, together with the other agricultural parties, really expect something from this Cabinet,” Van der Tak said on his way into the talks.

LTO says there are nearly 54,000 agricultural businesses in the Netherlands with exports totaling 94.5 billion euros in 2019.

The Dutch minister responsible for nitrogen, Christianne van der Wal, said she had no expectations heading into the talks.

“First, listen,” she said.

The Associated Press

The Democrats have taken aim at the stock market's safety net by taxing buybacks - potentially creating another headwind for investors

Harry Robertson
Fri, August 5, 2022 

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (second from right) agreed to move forward with Joe Biden's bill on Thursday.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Democrats plan to put a 1% tax on share buybacks, as part of a deal to rescue Joe Biden's agenda.

Stock buybacks have supported the market in recent years, with companies spending huge amounts on their own shares.

Analysts said the tax could be a new headwind, but said companies would likely increase spending on dividends.

The Democrats have agreed to introduce a 1% tax on share buybacks as part of President Joe Biden's climate and tax bill, in a move analysts said could create another headwind for equity investors.

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Democrat and former hold-out, agreed to move forward with what the party is calling the Inflation Reduction Act on Thursday night.

To gain her approval, Democrats dropped a provision that would have reduced tax breaks on the profits of hedge funds and private equity firms, known as "carried interest." Instead, they inserted a 1% excise tax on the controversial practice of stock buybacks, a person familiar with the matter told Insider.

Analysts said the new tax will not be welcomed by investors, just as they're grappling with rampant inflation and interest-rate hikes. They said buybacks have supported stock markets this year.

"Anything that touches buybacks is always a concern," Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at eToro, told Insider. "I think it's going to generate a lot of nervousness, just because buybacks are a big deal."

However, Laidler said the tax is likely to push companies to increase their dividends as they reduce buybacks. He said that may be preferable to many retail investors, who prefer a steady income stream.

A buyback is when a company repurchases its own shares in the marketplace. The practice returns money to investors by boosting the share price. It's also likely to reduce the number of shares outstanding, thereby boosting key performance metrics such as earnings per share.

US companies have been spending colossal amounts buying back their own shares over the last couple of years, after periods of strong profits left them with spare cash. S&P 500 companies are likely to spend in the region of $1 trillion on buybacks this year, analysts say, after purchasing a record $882 billion in 2021.

Derren Nathan, head of equity research at broker Hargreaves Lansdown, told Insider the Democrats' proposed 1% tax will impact companies' thinking.

"This move may cause board members to think twice about pulling that lever," he said. "1% might not seem huge, but with buyback programs often in the billions of dollars, the cash and earnings impact is not to be underestimated."

A person familiar with the matter told Insider that the 1% buyback tax would raise considerably more money than the now-removed carried interest provision, which was expected to generate around $14 billion.

The buyback tax is aimed at limiting a practice which many politicians and analysts have criticized. Opponents say buybacks enrich company shareholders and executives and discourage investments for the future in workers and machinery.

Tech companies, whose stock prices have been battered in 2022 after a surge during the pandemic, are some of the biggest practitioners of buybacks. Apple announced a whopping $90 billion buyback scheme earlier this year, and Microsoft unveiled a $60 billion plan in September last year.

Laidler said that although the 1% levy will not be welcomed by investors, companies are still likely to pay the same amount of money out by increasing dividends.

"I think the impact here is going to be more about how we cut the shareholder returns pie, rather than does it make any big changes to company investment," he said.

Stock market investors and company boards have bigger concerns right now, he said. Not least surging inflation, Federal Reserve rate hikes, and the threat of recession. US markets were little changed on Friday morning, with S&P 500 futures slightly in the green.

THE EIGHTIES RETURN; THE MULLET
Meet the number-crunching price 'nerds' responsible for calculating Canada's ghastly inflation rate


Joe O'Connor
Fri, August 5, 2022 


A cashier at a west end Toronto grocery store peered intently at a customer’s bill on a late July morning. She was looking for something specific — not an error, but proof that the price of an item had increased to the point where she was having misgivings about purchasing it again herself.

“It costs $4.99 for four pieces of corn now,” she said, stating fact. “That’s unbelievable.”

And that is Canada, in a historic, inflationary moment, the likes of which consumers — at least those who were old enough to be spending their hard-earned bucks on groceries, couches, cars, hotels, rent, booze and more — have not experienced since January 1983.

Year-over-year consumer inflation rang in at 8.1 per cent in June, after ringing in at 7.7 per cent in May, and this after a 6.8 per cent April gain. Yes, it is ugly out there on the consumer frontier, and it has been for several months.

The drumbeat of grim, inflation statistics doesn’t simply materialize out of thin air to wreak havoc upon household budgets. There are actual humans behind this monthly horror show, who collect, fret over, analyze, aggregate, verify, scrutinize, calculate, quality assure and closely guard the Consumer Price Index, the country’s primary measure of inflation, calculated by comparing the cost, over time, of a fixed basket of consumer goods and services. The inflation numbers, without fail, get released the third week of each month at 8:30 a.m. on the appointed day, thanks to the team of bureaucrats who toil away at them inside Statistics Canada’s Consumer Price Division — that is, the CPD.

We are wonks, we are nerds, and we really love this stuff,
Andrew Barclay, an economist with the CPD

“We are wonks, we are nerds, and we really love this stuff,” said Andrew Barclay, an economist with the CPD. He wasn’t alive in 1983 and, on a personal level, he isn’t overly thrilled with the price of just about anything these days. One of the more unique aspects about working full time on the CPI, as 50 or so staffers do, is that upon leaving the office the inflation calculators get smacked in the wallet by the work they do, just like any other Canadian consumer.

“We are working on something that is so relatable to ourselves,” said Elizabeth Abraham, the division chief.

On that note, the chief has postponed home repairs, due to the cost of materials, and put off buying a new car. Barclay has been more strategic about driving places, and is trying his utmost not to indulge a weakness for luxury cheeses, while Chris Li, an assistant director with the CPD, is now walking and biking to more activities, and seeking out whatever deals she can find at the grocery store.

Year-over-year consumer inflation rang in at 8.1 per cent in June.

But that’s not to say the team can’t find a certain beauty in the numbers, painful as they are, and the stories they tell, such as how a war in Ukraine, and decreased global oil supply, leads to higher prices at the pumps; how higher fuel prices have a knock-on effect on every sector of the consumer economy tied to transportation; how a semi-conductor shortage is pushing up the price of cars, new and used; and how travel-starved Canadians are shelling out buckets of dough for ho-hum accommodations.

“It is a very interesting time right now, but it has always kind of been an interesting time,” Barclay said. He is clearly not the only nerd who feels this way. Abraham radiates enthusiasm, and an obvious sense of pride — and duty — when she speaks of the CPD’s statistical “rigour,” while Li intones, with painstaking seriousness, that “regardless of what happens in the economy — this number must go out, because so many programs rely on it.”

The three colleagues were initially confused by the Financial Post’s request to write a profile of the individual — and it turned out there isn’t just one — responsible for generating the monthly number that has been causing so much national angst.

“We don’t necessarily see ourselves as individuals,” Barclay said. “We see ourselves as being behind the number.”

So, about that number, and how it gets calculated: pre-pandemic, Joe Blow Statistics Canada contract worker, in North Vancouver, say, would go to the grocery store with a scanner, walk the aisles and scan everything from produce to name-brand cereals. Nowadays, some grocery stores provide the number crunchers in Ottawa with weekly scanner data straight from their registers. Food prices are also collected using store websites or flyers to account for outlets that don’t provide data.

The CPI might be a bunch of numbers, but it is also constantly evolving to reflect the times, and consumer tastes

Collection teams that used to head out into the field now generally occupy desks and use web-scraping software to pull prices from retailer and service-provider sites, for just about anything and everything one could think a Canadian consumer might buy, including, lately, recreational cannabis.

The CPI might be a bunch of numbers, but it is also constantly evolving to reflect the times, and consumer tastes. So, weed is in, while dinosaurs, like that old DVD player you have tucked in the basement, get dropped. Streaming services, smart watches, ride-sharing services, all are relative new additions to the index. The immense, macro price numbers, ultimately get boiled down to 100,000 representative data points, and weighted, such that the apples you buy, which may have increased in price by 10 per cent year over year, aren’t afforded the same statistical heft in determining the final inflation number as the $2,500 a month you are now paying in rent.

Prices for various cannabis products are shown at a store in Regina. Marijuana is now included in the consumer price index.

Here’s a scoop: The crew at the CPD already have a pretty clear idea of what July’s inflation number is going to be, a number that will be finalized by Aug. 8, eight days before the big 8:30 a.m. reveal at Statistics Canada headquarters in Ottawa. Whatever the number is — trust me, don’t bother asking — it is treated as top secret.

“Our families have been trained not to ask questions,” Abraham said.

That means no sweet, inflation-related whispers between spouses over a glass of wine, and no blabbing to the kindly old pensioner next door. Not even Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem gets tipped off prior to release day, and this despite being the guy responsible for jacking interest rates in attempt to stuff the 8.1-per-cent-inflation genie back in the bottle.

The team always has a case of butterflies the morning of the release. Having a hint of self-doubt is human nature, Barclay said, especially when the stakes are so high. There are no do-overs, no begging off sick, and no asking the boss for an extension, no matter how ghastly the final inflation number is for the public, politicians, and monetary policy folk to digest.

“CPI is not revisable, and so I often use the joke that, ‘We get one chance to get it right,’” Abraham said.

Back at the west end Toronto grocery store, the cashier with the keen interest, and dismay, over the price of corn, sprayed the register’s conveyor belt with a cleaning solution, gave it a thorough wipe and stood at the ready.

“Next,” she said.

Trapped H2O Investors Inherit Stake in Troubled Taxi App

Lucca de Paoli and Luca Casiraghi
Fri, August 5, 2022 



(Bloomberg) -- Investors who have been trying for two years to reclaim money trapped in H2O Asset Management have had a new problematic investment dumped on their books: a ride-hailing app whose valuation has tumbled 75%.

German entrepreneur Lars Windhorst -- as part of an ongoing attempt to repay money owed to the money manager -- in January agreed to hand over notes linked to London-based hailing app Gett, according to a letter published on the firm’s website last week. H2O clients are owed about 1 billion euros ($1 billion) from assets that were frozen by the French regulator.

Back in January the Gett notes, which pay out if the company goes public, were valued at $106 million because the company was about to list through an already announced deal with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC. But that deal has since been shelved and the company’s valuation slashed to around $250 million from more than $1 billion.

The note adds to complications for investors still waiting for H2O’s outsize bet on Windhorst to come good. In 2019 the money manager saw billions leave its suite of funds after a Financial Times article detailed the scale of investments in companies linked to the entrepreneur. A year later the money manager was forced to freeze the funds by the French Market Regulator, reopening them only after sidepocketing the Windhorst notes.

A spokesperson for Windhorst’s investment firm Tennor Holding declined to comment. An H2O spokesperson confirmed broad details of the Gett investment and said the firm has been fully engaged, with the help of advisers, in the search for solutions to dispose of the assets held within the sidepocketed funds.

Russia Exposure

Gett has expanded rapidly since it was founded by Moscow-born Israeli entrepeneur Dave Waiser in 2011. It drew backing from Volkswagen AG and billionaire Len Blavatnik’s investment firm Access Industries. Windhorst took an undisclosed minority stake in the business when he contributed to a funding round, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The aborted SPAC deal, backed by Rosecliff Venture Management LLC, would have valued the company at around $1 billion. The firm was initially set up as a ride-hailing app, but now offers an aggregation service using existing ground transportation platforms.

In March this year the firm announced it was not going to follow through on the SPAC deal and that it would exit its Russian business, one of its three main markets. Waiser, who had been chief executive officer, moved on and was replaced by Matteo De Renzi.

A spokesperson for Access declined to comment. Representatives for Gett and VNV didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Evergreen

Windhorst had initially attempted to pay back H2O through a company called Evergreen. To help fund the potential deal, Evergreen issued a bond, sold in part to high-profile German investors, including fashion retail magnate Friedrich Knapp and health care entrepreneur Ulrich Marseille.

The buy back, which was intended to take place in several steps, stumbled as the French regulator ordered H2O to freeze redemptions from some of its funds because of valuation difficulties, while Windhorst was also unable to arrange sufficient financing.

Read more: H2O’s Crastes Faces Solo Future for London Fund Manager He Built

Tennor then reached another deal with H2O to restructure the outstanding bonds instead of buying them back. The new transaction includes the issuance of 1.45 billion euros of notes due next year to retire debt linked to companies owned by Tennor, according to a statement from Windhorst to business partners and clients last year.

Tennor was declared insolvent in the Netherlands in 2021, a ruling later reversed on appeal. At the end of 2021 H2O wrote down those notes by around 40% and acknowledged how little had been paid back so far and the Dutch court decision. H2O is aiming to begin repaying clients inside the sidepockets later this year, according to the letter sent to clients last week.

(Updates with additional comment from H2O in fifth and last paragraph)